Magicians have been designing and presenting illusions for 5000 years. They have developed principles, techniques and ethical positions for their craft that this paper argues are applicable to the design of human/computer interfaces. The author presents a number of specific examples from magic and discusses their counterparts in human interface design, in hopes that human interface practitioners and researchers will, having recognized the applicability of magic, go further on their own to explore its domain.

Too few interface designers actually use an iterative design process. Too few interface designers actually involve their anticipated users throughout the design of an interface. In order to build better interfaces, we need to build faster and more numerous prototypical interface examples. These prototypes, from early sketches to working systems, should be shown frequently and often to users for their feedback. This panel is a vignette that illustrates an interface design cycle. Our panelists will be given a real world interface design problem, and the audience will follow them through their usual process of design. Users will be involved in the process, to help in interface specification and to provide prototype feedback. We expect that although the panelists involved users throughout their design process, users will still have a good deal more to contribute to the interface design before a product is finalized. On stage we will witness real users, with varied backgrounds, providing comments and feedback on the working prototypes. The issue here is to remind designers that there is never enough user involvement in an interface design. We need to iterate our interface designs, based on users' feedback, more often and continuously if our interfaces are to be effective.